It Started With Matthew

When I was in my 20's and a new mother, I was still fragmented inside; battling negative voices, self-contempt, and irrational fears. I had been badly damaged by sexual abuse as a little girl, and I  was desperately seeking peace of mind and purpose for my life.

I was like a boat whose moorings had become untied and each wave was sending me crashing further away from being the person that I should have been.

I was in the grocery store when I ran into a young woman from my neighborhood. She invited me to a non-denominational Bible study called Bible Study Fellowship. It was in this Bible study of the book of Matthew
that I fell in love with Jesus Christ. I didn't know the Bible was so alive and relevant. I didn't know it could make me feel so alive.

As we studied Matthew verse by verse that year, Jesus became so real to me. I had been in church all my life but I didn't really know Jesus. As He began His ministry; turning water into wine, resisting Satan's temptations in the desert, preaching the Sermon on the Mount, I was in the crowd following Him, thirsting after His every word, soaking it up like a sponge.

And when His life culminated in His death on the cross, I realized that He had done that for me. He loved me when I was most unloveable and He wanted to show me the way to a better life. Jesus has been my best friend for over 40 years. He has never once let me down, never once failed to be there for me.

He saw a person in me that I couldn't see. Over the years, He's been chiseling away at my hard armor of distrust. It's been painful, and slower than I would like, but He's been faithful. He's not finished and I'm a work in progress and eternally grateful.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your soul", Matthew 11:28-29,
NIV.